


Red Lights

by that_this_will_do



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Discussion of canonical character death, F/M, Light Angst, Roommates, Self-Sacrificial Behavior, Unhealthy Relationships, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-05-14 13:52:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19274650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/that_this_will_do/pseuds/that_this_will_do
Summary: Some nights pass like shadows over a sunken face. All of a sudden it darkens, and you can see the depression, the pain, the unfairness. Then it’s over, leaving merely the clenched jaw, the scar above the lip, the lines around the eyes. And some nights, like sunlight. Just for a moment, everything is brilliant, beauty of youth. But then they pass, and it’s gone all the same.





	Red Lights

**Author's Note:**

> Title, lyrics, and inspired by Shane Koyczan's poem Red Lights (here, it's beautiful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggy9693vtcw)

_Lines are blurred_  
_the ones that tell the shape_  
_of my heart_ _  
from your heart_

Maybe it’s the time, nearly midnight on the last bus home. Maybe it’s the place, somewhere between one _there_ and another, sitting perfectly still but still nowhere _here_. Maybe it’s how long the day was. How long the week was. How short he’s made himself, slumped against the window, spine curled over his heart like an emergency blanket from a kind paramedic. _Why don’t you take this?_ He watches the street lights and lines on the road as they sway and pass by, replays in his mind the last conversation he and O had.

_“... we can talk about it when you get home.”_

_“...Bell, I’m not coming home.”_

It might as well have been a voicemail for the number of times he’d listened to those words, her words, tinny through the cell phone speaker but loud and clear in memory. Not coming home. Hour after hour after she called. Not coming home. Days gone. Not coming home. Months. Not a word from her. She’s somewhere in California, she has an apartment, and roommates, she’s safe, according to her, and not picking up her phone. He’s stopped calling only because he was afraid she’d disconnect her phone line if he didn’t. Now he replays the last time he heard her voice whenever he has a moment to think.

_I’m not coming home_

The bus rolls over a pothole. Smack. The cabin shakes. The window under his cheek jerks and he grabs the seat in front of him to brace himself. His arms are aching from the gym that morning, too much too fast not enough, but he still doesn’t straighten up in his seat. He cranes his neck to see the oncoming street signs in the dark. Can’t make out the letters until just before they whizz past. He frets about missing his stop, logically knowing they’re still a grocery store and two intersections away.

Octavia hated the bus. Refused to learn her routes for months on principle and he had to go with her everywhere. She didn’t talk to him for days after he announced they weren’t buying a new car. She screamed something about being able to afford one now that Mom was dead and they weren’t paying hospital bills. It was grief talking. Octavia always turned to anger. He couldn’t, anymore, so he didn’t let himself take it personally. Eventually she asked him to show her how to get to school and got rides from friends everywhere else. He took it as the closest thing he was going to get.

He thanks the driver as he gets out through the side door. When they rode together, Octavia always jumped from the bus to the sidewalk, which he thinks about every time his foot hits the asphalt first. The driver shouts back a “Take care, man,” and he shoves his hands in his pockets as he walks up the street. Left on 2nd, right on Wichita, six blocks. He takes the stairs up his apartment building to the third floor. Just habit now, leftover from racing an eight-year-old girl in the elevator.

_“Where are you?”_

_“California. Bell, we need to talk.”_

The lights are on in the apartment when he pushes the door open. Clarke, his roommate, is back from work and probably in the living room. She calls out a greeting, which he echoes, going over to the fridge and looking for the leftover stir-fry. He spots an emptied container in the sink. Clarke must have eaten it. He grabs a microwavable mac-n-cheese. Clarke shouts something else, essentially _how are you_ , and he says back _fine_. They can’t talk in separate rooms. Too many walls in the arguably tiny apartment that interrupt sound. It’s not usually a problem.

When they first met, he didn’t think it would be possible to simply live with her, to move around the same space without sparks or fighting. He thought they would be snapping at each other constantly, they’d have to be best friends or lovers or archenemies. There was no middle ground with someone like Clarke Griffin. Or there shouldn’t have been.

She answered his ad for a roommate, the one he had to put up because Octavia left and he had credit card debt. She came with references and a month’s rent upfront. They met at a cafe once to go through logistics and make sure they could live with each other. From the way they bickered the whole time, he’s sure any outside observer would have said they failed that second thing.

“Do want the room or not?”

“Is this as bad as you get?”

“Pretty definitely, _princess._ ”

It was July. She showed up to the cafe in cut-off shorts and a tank top, blonde hair loosely braided to the side. Her blue eyes lit up every time he snapped back at her and she licked her lips before responding in kind. If they had met under any other circumstances, he would have tried to flirt with her outright. Invite her back to his place. Which he could now, he thought miserably and a little savagely. Of course he also immediately lost that ability by getting her as a roommate.

He learned more about her as she moved in. She had a shit-ton of stuff, for one thing. But also she was a nurse in an Urgent Care, and an artist part time. She was single, bi, didn’t have a lot of photos of family or otherwise. For all they fought constantly, they also clicked. Maybe he just assumed that eventually they’d be something. That she was a little lost and looking for someone too, at the very least a friend. But she worked nearly sixty hours a week on an irregular schedule. He worked nine-to-five plus overtime. She was usually asleep or gone when he left in the morning and when he got home. On her off days, she went out. He saw friends picking her up as he cooked on Saturday mornings. Or she went somewhere to draw. Sometimes they spent a day together in the apartment. They bickered, as per usual, but not really talking became a habit and nothing happened.

She just needed a roommate. Which was fine, he needed one too. He'd be her roommate. They were well-matched.

He shrugs out of his coat and hangs up his keys as the microwave runs. Clarke’s sprawled the couch, still in her scrubs, blonde hair braided up and out of her face. She’s wearing fuzzy socks with cat-faces on them. He toes off his shoes, leaning against the wall.

“How was work?”

She scrunches up her face. “Dreadful. Someone came in with legos in their rectum.” She glances over at him and smirks. “I’d love to tell you more about it, but HIPAA forbids.”

The microwave dings for the mac-n-cheese; he returns to the kitchen.

"I'm re-watching _Attack of the Clones_ in here, if you want to join," she shouts.

He grabs a spoon. "Why are you watching that?"

"It was on AMC."

As he walks back into the living room, she pulls her feet up to make room on the couch, immediately depositing them in his lap when he sits. He ignores the cat faces grinning up at him, stretched his legs over the coffee table.

He watched the prequels for the first time through with Octavia. He didn’t like them at all, but Octavia loved them so he kept it to himself. She chattered about Anakin for days after seeing _Phantom Menace_ , pestering him with questions while they and Mom wandered around the grocery store and he regretted that this was her first exposure to the Star Wars universe. He helped her create a mock up podracer around her twin bed, made her a lightsaber from spare bit of metal in shop class for her birthday. After the second movie, she shoved a promo-magazine in his face and had him figure out how to do “Naboo Hair” on her. Her hair was almost down to her waist by that time.

He worried a lot about the third movie, since he was pretty sure she hadn’t seen the originals or at least hadn’t made the connection between Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader. Or if she had, she didn’t tell him about it. And she told him everything. But when they walked out of the theater, all she did was nod a little, as if the whole thing made sense. Then she rolled her eyes at him when he started walking to the bus stop and told him, a little angrily, that a friend was picking her up.

He has to get up to throw the mac-n-cheese container away. He picks up Clarke’s feet one by one, gently moving them off his lap and standing. He listens to Obi Wan talk to Jango Fett as he washes out the dishes in the sink and doesn’t sit again when he returns, just leans against the wall, eyes on the screen.

“Hey, come’ere,” Clarke says, not looking at him. She’s moved to the middle of the couch, so he makes his way over to the armchair.

“No,” she says, “over here.”

He turns and stares at her for a moment. She blinks up at him. Gestures to the cushion she was sitting on before he got up. He looks at her, searching for something he couldn’t name, and goes over to sit down. Once he’s settled, she curls into his side, flopping her head on his shoulder. His arm comes around her on instinct.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“Yeah,” she says, like she can’t imagine why he’d ask. So he lets himself lean into the couch cushions and focus on the movie. Feels her tense as Obi-Wan Kenobi dives out of Padme’s glass window, and sees the back of her cheeks pull up when Anakin goes into his utterly-terrifying-and-idiotic dive.

It feels good to hold her. Familiar, somehow, even though they’ve never done anything like this before. Her head fits under his chin and her weight settles easily on top of him. The last time he hugged someone was before Octavia took off. She’s shorter than it used to--he’s used to. And her hair is coarser against his neck. He’s starting to drift off when Clarke speaks again.

"My dad died."

He wants to sit bolt-upright like a cartoon character, but her weight stops him so he settles for gripping the back of the couch and asking, “Today?"

She shakes her head and looks up at him, her expression somber but calm. He tries to keep his sudden panic off his face. "No, it was a while ago," she says. He feels like he knows exactly what she means, and relaxes again. Her head drops back onto his shoulder.

"Was it sudden?" he asks. It doesn't really matter, except it does.

She shakes her head again. "No, pancreatic cancer. He was in and out of remission for years. I can't decide if it was better that way, seeing it coming."

"My mom died suddenly,” he says. “Car accident." Sort of, he wants to add. But people don't sort of die suddenly. She was dead the instant the car flipped over. There and then gone, except--

“He was in a coma for days, at the very end,” Clarke says. “My mother pulled the plug. I know that he wouldn’t have, I mean, I know. But, I don’t know that I’ll ever really forgive her for it.”

He swallows, manages a strangled, “yeah,” and Clarke sinks into him. They sit together, silent, watching Anakin Skywalker destroy robots with his lightsaber.

Octavia asked him if Mom would make it, over the hospital phoneline when the ER nurses finally let him go and he could call her. She picked up almost immediately. There was so much fear in her voice, like she’d been waiting for the phone to ring and expecting the worst. And it was pretty damn close. Hearing it, he wanted to destroy something. But he couldn’t, so with all the calm he could muster he said, “I don’t know.”

But he did, because. Well. Because.

Clarke shift against him. He’d been rubbing circles into her shoulder unconsciously. He stops when he notices and she makes a small noise in protest. He moves them sightly to get a better angle and smooths his hand down her arm and back up. Eventually she catches his fingers in hers, and brings their hands over her heart.

“Thanks,” she whispers.

He dissolves into the moment, the stress and strain of everyday living together diffused, forgiven, accepted, and falls asleep.

_“God, Bell, are you even listening to me?”_

_“O, please…”_

...

“Come on, up.”

The movie’s over, the TV screen black. Turned off. The lights are still on. Clarke is pushing on his shoulder. He sits up blearily, hunching over and catching himself on his hands. Clarke’s face is puffy with sleep and she’s smiling tiredly but fondly at him. His foggy brain zings. She grabs his hand and pulls him to stand with her, leaving him by th couch to turn off the lights in the kitchen and living room. In the dark, she leads him down the hallway, but into her room, not his.

“Are we sleeping together?” he asks, trying for playful but ending up with scratchy.

“Just for tonight,” she says.

“Whatever you want, princess.”

She takes off her scrubs, revealing a tank top and plain grey panties. She starts undoing her hair and looks expectantly at him. He manages to lift his arms enough to remove unbutton his shirt. He pushes his pants off and pulls his undershirt over his head. Clarke waits for him to get in the bed before she climbs in on top of him and pulls his arms around her.

She sleeps where Octavia used to. Different mattress, but the same bedframe, which he found at a thrift store and fixed up when Octavia demanded to get rid of the twin bed. When Octavia lived in it, the room was a permanent whirlwind of stuff. Clothes, shoes, make-up, stuffed animals, magazines, school-books, sports gear. She had a vanity table from a garage sale in one corner and posters plastering the wall and seemed to be anti-organization-of-any-kind. She came home from school one day and that weekend when he asked, she pronounced her cleaning philosophy to anarchist and isolationist.

Clarke is still awake against him, he can feel it. He wants to say something, tell her something. Maybe _thanks_ , like she said, for whatever the evening was. _We should hang out more_ or _I really like you_. But the only word he can get his mouth to form is, “Why?”

“I don’t want to be alone,” she says.

He swallows. Kisses the top of her head, thinking maybe, maybe it’s the best he could get.

There are so many things about Clarke that should annoy him. There are so many reasons they’re horrible for each other, as roommates. But. She’s messy. He cleans. She’s disorganized. He’s never lived in a tidy home. She hates laundry. He does it every Sunday. She can’t keep her stuff regulated to her room. He has no stuff, so overall it’s not that cluttered. She would subsist on takeout. He cooks. She listens to awful pop music. He’s heard it all already. She’s loud coming home at 2am. He likes knowing she made it back safe.

He lies there in the dark with her weight on top of him and the certainty that he loves her. It’s not a horrifying realization. If nothing else, at least he has that piece of himself back now. Or, maybe it’s that he’s finally given that piece of himself away again.

_“I love you, O… whatever it is… it’s okay, it’ll be fine, O…”_

_“I’m leaving. I have to go.”_

Maybe they’ll wake up together in the morning. Maybe they’ll still be curled around each other. Like blankets from a smiling, inexplicably smiling paramedic. _You need to breathe, sir._ Orange, thick fabric, too small and too big all at once. _I’m sorry, sir, she’s in critical condition._ Maybe he’ll tell her how he feels. Or kiss her good morning. Maybe their fuses will suddenly catch and they’ll explode, catch fire together. Or maybe, he’ll wake up in the middle of the night, when her breathing has evened out and her tears have dried, brush her dark hair off her face, kiss her temple, and silently pad down the hall. Fall asleep in his own bed. Wake up early, alone, and get ready for another day.

 _Lines are blurred_  
_the ones that tell the shape_  
_of my being_ _  
from the blankness of night_


End file.
